Where Love Found a Safe Harbour

From Ljubljana, via Lavrica and Pijava Gorica, you arrive in Turjak where the famed Counts of Turjak (Auersperg) once lived in the largest castle in Slovenia. Past Rašica with its memorial house of the Protestant Reformer Primož Trubar, author of the first Slovene book, and Ponikve, you arrive in the wide karst polje of Dobrepolje, periodically flooded with water from underground caves. Visit the large Podpeč Cave in the village of Podpeč. In the summer heat, picnic in the shade of the hundred-year-old linden-trees in Zdenska vas. Take a photo of the impressive toplar hayracks; there are only few left! Laugh at the fresco of the pilgrim fox in the little Church of Sv. Urh in Maršiči and continue your tour to the octagonal Baroque Church of the Assumption in Nova Štifta. A giant wooden sieve beside the road says you have arrived in the Municipality of Ribnica where people have been manufacturing a thousand and one useful objects from wood since the 14th century. In Hrovača, revisit history at the inspiring Škrabčeva Homestead. Kočevje (6) will enchant you with its legend of tragic love. Visit the intact Kočevje primeval forest, but only in the company of a guide!